


Easy Harmony

by Foilfreak



Category: One Piece
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, Mutual Pining, will update tags as I go
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-25
Updated: 2017-08-25
Packaged: 2018-12-19 15:59:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11901156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Foilfreak/pseuds/Foilfreak
Summary: When it comes to a relationship between two people, it is often said that "what comes easy won't last, and what lasts won't come easy", and for the most part this is true. For Basil and Apoo however, you'll find that the reason why they last, when all odds are stacked against them, is because they simply did what came easiest to them.





	Easy Harmony

**Author's Note:**

> Before you read please note that I prefer to refer to Basil Hawkins as Basil rather than Hawkins even though I know it's technically his last name and even though I refer to Apoo using his first name. It's just a personal preference on my part and also plays into a little nickname that Apoo ends up giving Basil later on. Please Enjoy!

It was around two in the morning when a loud bang on the wall startled Apoo, waking him from the depths of sleep. After sitting up, Apoo’s eyes scanned the dark room in confusion, wondering where the source of the loud noise that woke him up had come from. His question was quickly answered however, by the moans and groans coming from the room next door, indicating that whoever was in there had, for some reason, decided to pick up where they had left off just a few hours before. 

Apoo glared at the wall, hoping that the couple on the other side would somehow become aware of how displeased he was with being woken up to the sound of sex he wasn’t involved in. And while Apoo could just as easily bang back on the wall to indicate how much he wanted the couple to shut up, he knew that it would be more beneficial in the long run to just roll back over and wait it out. 

A couple of sleepless hours later, Apoo was really beginning to wonder what he had done that merited this kind of horrific treatment. Not only have the couple next door (whom Apoo had determined were a part of that fucking redhead’s crew) not stopped their sex marathon since they started it nearly two hours ago, but a few more had decided to join in on the fun, making it near impossible for Apoo to fall back to sleep. 

Normally a sleepless night such as this wouldn’t affect Apoo very much, after all he was a pirate who enjoyed partying well into the night at whatever bar or tavern his crew happened to find. In this case however, he and everyone else on Kid’s hideout base had just finished having a massive party celebrating the ship of travelling dancers that had crash landed on shore just a few days previous. The party had been fun while it lasted but now Apoo was beginning to feel the exhaustion that came with such an intense session of celebration.

Apoo knew that if he had any hope of getting a good night sleep tonight, he was going to have to relocate and find someplace else. Heaving a sigh, the longarm reluctantly tore himself from the soft and warm confines of his bed, taking a pillow and blanket with him in case the floor ended up being his only option, and trudged out into the dark and empty hallway. 

At this point it didn't really matter where Apoo went, so long as wherever he ended up was quiet enough to allow him to go back to sleep for whatever amount of time remained before he’d be woken up again by the early morning hustle and bustle of the castle. As Apoo sleepily walked through the empty halls, he did his best to remember which rooms did and did not contain members of his crew. If he was going to end up crashing in someone else’s room for the night, he figured that he’d have the best luck dealing with one of his own crew members rather than those of the other two crews currently occupying this island. Unfortunately for Apoo, doors have a tendency to look very similar to one another at 4 am, and it only took a few moments for Appo to realize that he was totally lost in the labyrinth of Kid’s hideout.

One side of Apoo was getting really tired of all the nasty luck he seemed to be having tonight, and was about two seconds away from just giving up and finding a corner to curl up in. The more paranoid side of Apoo however, didn't feel like getting murdered in his sleep by leaving himself out in the open to potential attack, and instead headed over to the nearest door he could find, and knocked. 

After a few moments of waiting without any kind of response, Apoo figured that the person on the other side must not have heard him the first time, so he knocked a second time, this time a little more forcefully. A few more minutes passed and there was still no response. Now Apoo was beginning to get ticked off. As he raised his hand to bang on the door, he heard something from inside the room, a muffled sound, followed by a fairly loud banging noise and what sounded like an annoyed groan. 

A silence fell for a moment before the door clicked and slowly swung open, revealing a head of messy, curly blonde hair. 

“Basil” Apoo said in slight surprise. The last person Apoo had expected to see tonight was the infamous magician Basil Hawkins, after all, the blonde's room was located across the castle from Apoo’s, meaning that he must have walked from one end of the castle to the other in order to get here, although it didn’t seem like he went very far initially.

Once his initial shock subsided and Apoo got a good look at the man standing in front of him, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, he couldn’t help but notice how different Basil looked from normal, dressed in a tattered black tank top and loose purple sari pants. The blonde looked… slimmer. Without his long cloak, sword, and metal arm thingy, Basil didn’t appear nearly as wide or robust as he had once thought he was. Alternatively however, now that it wasn’t covered by his cloak, Apoo saw that Basil’s upper body was fucking shredded. The blonde’s muscles weren’t excessively big or bulky like Killer’s or even that damn redhead’s, but even in the dark, candlelit hallway he could tell that they were incredibly powerful, and the fact that his arms and shoulders were covered in varyingly sized scars meant that Basil probably knew how to use them too, something Apoo decided he would keep in mind… just in case.

Another interesting discovery Apoo made while staring blankly at the man in front of him, was that his weird eyebrow-spike-things were no longer present on his face. Instead, he could make out faint, light-blonde wisps of hair along Basil’s brow bone, that were barely visible due to their lack of color, and totally impossible to see when he had his eyebrow-spike-things on.

Apoo wasn’t quite sure why his brain found any of the above information to be significant in any way. Most of them were just observations that he made while staring intently at the blonde like the fucking weirdo that he is. All he knew was that in the absolute clusterfuck that was his thought process, one thought was made clear above the rest.

‘He looks really good like this!”

Before his brain could properly process this strange and cryptic thought, the sound of Basil speaking tore Apoo from his trance.

“What do you want?” the blonde groaned. His voice was raspy from sleep but it carried a very annoyed tone to it, probably from being woken up at such an early hour of the morning. Had Apoo not been so sleep deprived himself, he would have felt pretty bad about waking the blonde so early, but his brain was starting to run low on juice, so such emotional functions weren’t working as they normally do. 

“Can I sleep in here for the night?” Apoo asked bluntly, his words slightly slurred from his exhaustion. The blonde looked at him suspiciously for a moment. His eyes were squinted and his face held a calculated, albeit tired, expression. 

“No” Basil answered, already beginning to close his door. 

“Wait wait wait, hold on please, you gotta let me crash here, I’m begging you” Apoo pleaded shoving his shoulder and torso in the way of the door to prevent it from closing. 

“Why the fuck should I?” the blonde spat, his annoyance quickly turning to anger as he glared at the man currently wedged in his door and attempted to push him out of the way, so he could close the door and go back to sleep. Basil’s malicious tone and use of an actual curse word caught Apoo by surprise, as he had never heard the blonde talk in anything but a calm and proper voice, it was one of the things he found interesting about the man. His cool, calm, and collected disposition contrasted greatly with Apoo’s loud, flamboyant, and over-the-top personality. 

Appo’s pathological need to be the center of attention often drives quieter, more reserved people like Basil away, as they find him too overwhelming to be around for extended periods of time, and yet for some reason, he never felt the need to assert his presence around the blonde. 

One reason for this could be that despite having his nose almost constantly buried in his tarot cards, Basil never really ignored him whenever he attempted to initiate conversation. Most people who don’t want to talk to him just pretend like he isn’t there, and ignore any and all of his attempt at starting conversation. This kind of treatment only furthers Apoo’s drive to get their attention, however, long story short, it usually ends with Apoo stomping away furiously, muttering something about “the nerve of some people”.

With Basil however, whenever he tried talking to the blonde, he always got some kind of response back. It might not be anything more than a monosyllable or two at a time, but for some reason, his acknowledgment and willingness to, at the very least, listen to what Apoo had to say made the longarm very happy.

Although he doubted Basil thought the same, Apoo liked to believe that he and the blonde shared a comfortable friendship; Basil always listened to Apoo’s long winded rants that never really went anywhere, and so in turn, Apoo did his best to show at least a mild curiosity in some of the things that Basil was interested in, usually in the form of listening to the blonde explain the meanings and functions of the cards in his tarot deck, or simply asking for a reading.

As much as he didn’t want to upset the man by barging into his room at 4 am and infringing on his privacy, Apoo knew he was going to have to wrap this up quickly if he didn't want to spend the next hour looking for another room to stay in.

“Ok look,” Apoo began, “a group of Kid’s crewmates and some of those dancers have been having marathon sex in the room next to mine for hours, and I can’t sleep because of it.”

“And…” Basil said in a condescending voice, indicating that he really didn't care about the longarm’s plight. 

“I’ve been up for like, the past three days and I could really use some sleep.”

“And…”

“Look,” Apoo started, his voice was low and harsh, but shook slightly from fatigue and irritation, “I’ve been walking around this motherfucking labyrinth for god knows how long now, and I just want to go back to sleep. I promise I’ll be quiet, I’ll even sleep on the floor if you want me to, you won’t even know I’m here, so please for the sake of my sanity just. Let. Me. In.” Apoo pleaded desperately to the blonde.

Basil studied the man standing in his doorway. His exhaustion and frustration with the events of the past few hours were plainly visible on his face. His eyes were bloodshot and red, and his hands were shaking where they pressed against the door frame and handle, clear signs of how little sleep the long arm was running on.

Had anyone else woken him up at such an early of the morning asking to stay in his room for the night, Basil would have already denied their request and gone back to bed without so much as a second thought. Unfortunately, the longarm was doing a magnificent job of playing the few remaining heartstrings Basil had left, and the blonde slowly began to feel his own anger and exasperation toward the man shift to sympathy.

Basil groaned in tired, conflicted irritation, allowing his head to rest against the wood of the door for a moment to contemplate his options. On the one hand Basil knew he had no obligation to offer the long arm a place in his room, they were enemy pirates after all, regardless of their current alliance, and this whole thing could be an elaborate ruse that ultimately ended in his murder. On the other hand however, Basil had a very persistent and nagging feeling that he was being overly paranoid and Apoo was simply looking for somewhere to crash for a little while. 

Thinking back on it, Basil also noted how the longarm had always been rather friendly and polite to him. Apoo always said ‘hi’ whenever they ran into each other on an island, struck up casual conversation whenever the time permitted, showed somewhat of a genuine interest in how his fortune telling powers worked (even requesting a reading for himself), and hell the long arm had even saved Basil two years ago on the Sabaody Archipelago, despite the fact that the man would have clearly benefited overall from the captain of one of his main rivals being taken out before reaching the Red Line. 

All things considered, Basil couldn’t deny that the long arm had been nothing but good to him, and although he’d never admit it, he enjoyed the man’s company and enthusiasm a great deal. 

Basil had always had a great deal of difficulty making friends throughout his life. When he was a child, most kids his age avoided him because thought that he was weird, and would often claim that, due to his interest in fortune telling and “magic” as a whole, he was some kind of witch that killed innocent animals to perform blood rituals (Basil has never once harmed an innocent animal) and consumed the hearts of the living in order to further his demonic powers (he’s a vegetarian). 

This sort of treatment from those around him, including the adults, continued until well into his adult years, and led Basil to firmly believe that people suck and he didn’t need friends in order to be successful in life. While he still held onto this belief for the most part, his encounters with Apoo over the past two years have caused the long arm to become somewhat of an exception to the rule. Not only did Basil consider Apoo one of his only actual friends, but he often found himself wanting to spend time with and get to know the other man, which is strange considering that overly extravagant people like Apoo tend to annoy him more than anything else. 

Basil groaned, all this thinking was beginning to give him a headache. All he wanted right now was to go back to sleep, and the only that was going to happen was if he told Apoo that he was just going to have to find someplace else to sleep.

‘You don’t have to say yes to him’ Basil told himself, ‘Just say no, and close the door before you do something dumb, he’ll understand later on when…’

“Please Baz” Apoo pleaded in an uncharacteristically quiet and frail way. Any remaining annoyance or frustration Basil had with the man left without a trace of it even being there. Why were they even still standing there? They were both exhausted from the past few days and just wanted to go the fuck to sleep, and Basil had no more energy or willpower to fight the stubborn longarm with. And so, heaving a sigh, Basil reluctantly opening the door back up and stepped aside, allowing Apoo to enter his room.

As far as Apoo could tell, Basil’s room wasn’t any different from his own room, albeit his was far messier than the blonde’s, however Apoo didn’t care as much for the state of the bedroom as he did the large bed situated against the back wall of the room, which looked oh so warm and soft and inviting and just begging to be slept on.

“I get the right side” Basil called over his left shoulder, closing and locking the door behind him before heading to use the bathroom.

“That’s fair” Apoo replied before diving under the covers and making himself comfortable.

When Basil returned from the bathroom a few minutes later, he found the long arm fast asleep curled under the covers, a sight which reminded him of how tired he himself was. Stifling a yawn, Basil got under the covers, and thought for only a moment about how much warmer the bed was than usual, before falling into the depths of slumber himself.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys I hope you enjoyed this. I have no idea if this was actually good and I am very aware of how small the audience for this pairing is so if you are reading this please give me feedback as I would love to write more for this story but would love some reader feedback before I dive too deeply into this and end up making it a bit too self indulgent. Thanks so much for reading and I hope to see you again soon!


End file.
